


McFlurries & Love

by Brumeier



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fast Food, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5597185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What starts out as a simple trip to McDonald's turns into a relationship changer for Steve and Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	McFlurries & Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taste_is_Sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/gifts).



> So, I was chatting with Taste_is_Sweet about a beta she did on one of my fics. We have this thing where I write a lot of eating scenes and she tries to cut them all out. It’s how we roll. ::grins:: Our exchange went something like this:
> 
> Me: Did you notice? No-one is eating!  
> Taste: I did notice. But it’s not really a food story.  
> Me: I could’ve worked some in. Flashback to a tender scene at McDonald’s.  
> Taste: NO!  
> Me: Love over McFlurries.  
> Taste: I double dog dare you.  
> Me: To write a love scene at McD’s? Child’s play.  
> Taste: Okay, I’ll up the ante. Make it Stucky. BOOM!  
> Me: Challenge accepted! 
> 
> And since I’m between projects at the moment, and my son was at his dad’s for a few days, I was able to come up with this little bit of fluffy nonsense. Dedicated to Taste, who loves a food fic SO DAMN MUCH! LOL!

“Why are we here?” Bucky hesitates just inside the door, scanning the room.

Steve waits patiently. “Tony says everyone eats this stuff.”

His friends have been adding things to Steve’s notebook, experiences they think he needs to have: movies, songs, food, places to visit. A trip to McDonald’s is on the food page, between Orange Julius and Memphis barbeque.

Steve’s not sure why he brought Bucky, beyond the need to spend as much time with his long-lost friend as he possibly can. Bucky doesn’t like crowds, and is still self-consciously hiding himself in the dark blue hoodie Clint gave him, and goodness knows Steve doesn’t want to push him. But going out for fast food seems like the kind of thing normal people do, and he wants to give Bucky a little more normal while he tries to find his place in this new world.

It’s probably a really bad idea.

“Too many windows,” Bucky says.

“Two exits, plus a third through the kitchen,” Steve tells him. Three point of ingress, true, but also three possible escape routes. Luckily they have good timing, and the best table in the place opens up while they’re still standing by the door. “Corner table.”

Bucky nods curtly and makes a beeline for it. It’s a small booth, wedged into a corner between windows, nothing but solid wall behind the table. While Steve doubts there’s any cause for this level of vigilance, Bucky feeling even a little at ease is his only concern.

Steve takes his place in line, trying to look unassuming in his t-shirt and ballcap, but of course the girl behind the counter recognizes him. She stares, brown eyes wide as saucers and her mouth hanging open, while Steve pretends to study the posted menu. He has no idea what’s good here, or what Bucky will like, so there’s really only one course of action.

“One of everything, please.”

“You, you’re…you’re…”

“Steve,” he says kindly. “Just Steve.”

“Right.” The girl is obviously flustered, but she makes a concerted effort to pull herself together and do her job. “Uh…everything?”

“Yes, please.”

The girl has a whispered consult with the manager, who doesn’t seem to care that Captain America is standing in the middle of his McDonald’s. He’s more interested in the sale, which is fine by Steve. The order gets put in, Steve pays with the card that’s tied to his over-full bank account, and the girl promises to personally deliver his food to him when it’s ready, so he doesn’t have to stand around waiting for it.

“Thank you,” he says politely. 

The girl gives him two jumbo paper cups to use at the self-serve beverage station. There are a lot of choices, but Steve gets them Cokes because it’s familiar, even if it doesn’t taste the same as it did back in the day.

Bucky might as well be a statue, he’s sitting so still in the booth. The hood shadows his eyes, but Steve can see them moving, watching everyone as they come and go. His hands, the left one hidden by a leather glove, are balled into fists on his thighs.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, sliding into the seat across from Bucky. “No-one’s gonna bother us here.”

He sets the sodas on the table, lids and straws already in place, and leans back, purposefully trying to exude a sense of calm. Trying to lead by example. Bucky has been in a state of perpetual tension since coming back into Steve’s life, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. He didn’t accept Steve’s offer to be roommates, instead getting his own place in Steve’s same building, and acts as if every nice thing Steve tries to do for him has strings attached.

It can be exhausting, some days, trying to be Bucky’s friend.

“Why are we here?” Bucky asks again.

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. I just wanted to try something new. Just a normal lunch out, with my friend.”

Bucky makes a derisive noise at that, and Steve has to mentally talk himself out of getting angry. He can’t force Bucky to remember them, their friendship. Or at least more than he already does, which seems to be the very basics. Enough to know that Steve can be trusted. Enough to break through Hydra’s brainwashing. Steve knows he can’t get the old Bucky back, he _knows_ that. But he can’t help wishing for something more than the tentative friendship they have right now.

The food comes and every eye in the place is on their table, piled high with cardboard boxes in a variety of sizes. Not to mention milkshakes, ice cream, and little hand-held apple pies. Bucky pushes the hood back, eyeing the mound of food with a dubious expression on his face.

“This is a lot,” he says.

“Good thing we have such high metabolisms, then,” Steve responds with a grin. “So…I guess we just dive in and see what’s good.”

He grabs the nearest box, which is marked as a double cheeseburger. It doesn’t look like much when he opens it up, but he’s willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Bucky isn’t as forgiving: he spits his mouthful back into the container.

“This isn’t a hamburger,” he says, lip curled in disgust. “Tastes like crap.”

Bucky isn’t wrong. The meat patties are thin, and Steve isn’t sure how they were cooked but there’s not much flavor to them. He goes for a milkshake – surely that must be good – and experiences more disappointment. It tastes off somehow. Not at all what he was expecting.

“You remember those egg creams we’d get at Fleckman’s?” Steve asks. The French fries, he finds, aren’t half bad.

Bucky pauses in the act of spooning what looks like lumpy ice cream into his mouth. “What?”

“Fleckman’s Pharmacy. It’s where my mom would get my medicine, when we could afford it. There was a soda fountain, made the best egg creams in Brooklyn.”

“I think…maybe?” Bucky lowers his hand, and he has that familiar look on his face, the one he gets when he’s trying to pull a memory out of the fractured recesses of his mind.

Steve opens his mouth to tell Bucky not to worry about it, it’s not anything important, but it turns out Bucky does remember.

“The soda jerk. His name was…was…”

_Philip “Four Eyes” Franks made the best egg creams in Brooklyn. Bucky hadn’t personally tasted all that his borough had to offer, but that hardly mattered. He had no reason to doubt Four Eyes’ ability when he’d been on the receiving end of that fizzy magic._

_He’d managed to scrounge up twenty cents, throwing dice with some guys out behind the school, and that was the first thing he’d thought to spend it on. He could’ve gone in on his own, had the whole thing to himself, but it didn’t seem right not to share the wealth with his best pal._

_“You sure, Buck?” Stevie asked. He was still sporting a shiner from the tussle he’d gotten into with Vince Fratelli, which took up most of his thin face. He was a scrawny, sickly kid, but he was the best friend Bucky’d ever had, for reasons he wasn’t always sure of himself._

_“’Course I’m sure. You think I’d rather spend it on some dame?”_

_That made Stevie blush, which wasn’t much of a challenge. He scrambled up on the stool at the counter fast enough, betraying his own eagerness. Stevie rarely had the money to waste on frivolous things. When he did get some scratch, he hoarded it like a miser so he could buy art pencils, or something nice for his mom, or another tin of asthma cigarettes. Bucky’d been repaid in sketches and drawings more times than he could count, not that he minded. Stevie was like some kind of savant with an art pencil._

_“What’ll it be, boys?” Four Eyes asked, though he knew full well they always ordered the same thing._

_Bucky slapped his dimes on the counter. “One egg cream, two straws.”_

_“Don’t skimp on the syrup,” Stevie said._

_“You got it, kid.”_

_Four Eyes was always nice to the kids, unlike Mr. Fleckman, who seemed to regard anyone under the age of eighteen as a thug looking to steal candy bars. Which, yes, Bucky had done a time or two. But he was good enough not to get caught, not like that dope Arnie Mueller, whose mom had come down and dragged him home by his ear, screaming at him in German the whole way._

_The egg cream was keen. Cold and fizzy going down, with just the right amount of chocolate. Stevie made a happy noise when he took his first hit off the straw, eyes closing and an almost rapturous look on his face. It made Bucky’s skin flush hot, and he covered by taking another sip himself._

_Between the two of them they managed to make that egg cream last a good ten, fifteen minutes. As always, Bucky left that last of it for Stevie._

_“You sure?”_

_“I’ve had my fill. Go ahead.”_

_It was so easy to make Stevie happy, and Bucky was glad to do it. The kid had enough problems, what with being sick all the time and not being able to do the rough and tumble stuff that Bucky routinely got involved in. Didn’t stop Stevie from picking fights with the biggest bullies on the block, though. It was lucky he had Bucky around to watch his back._

_“That was great, Buck, thanks!” Stevie beamed at him, and Bucky swore there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for that kid._

“Four Eyes Franks,” Steve says with a laugh. “I almost forgot about him. I remember he seemed so old back then, but he was barely in his twenties.”

It’s such a small thing, remembering going for egg creams together, but Steve treasures those memories. Their lives had been so simple back then, untouched by the evils of Hydra and Red Skull. He’s glad that Bucky is able to share that with him.

Bucky doesn’t look as happy. In fact, he’s staring into his lumpy ice cream in a slightly panicky way.

“Hey. You okay?”

“I always let you finish it,” Bucky says, his voice hushed.

It takes Steve a second or two to make sense of that. “Yeah, you did. You’re a really good friend, Bucky.” He hopes if he says it enough, it’ll start sinking in and Bucky might start believing it.

He’s surprised when Bucky thrusts the ice cream at him, though on closer inspection the cup says McFlurry across it.

“It’s good,” Bucky says. 

Steve’s a little taken back, but he dutifully tries the McFlurry. There are chunks of chocolate in there, and caramel. Bucky’s right, it’s good. Much better than the milkshake. But when he tries to give it back, Bucky waves him off.

“You can finish it.” Bucky’s already cramming fries into his mouth, but his cheeks are pink and he won’t look at Steve.

“I don’t –”

“Just finish it, already! Christ!” Bucky snaps.

Steve sets the cup aside, keeping his movements slow. He never knows what’s going to set Bucky off, make him lash out. He was hoping to avoid that today, but he’ll deal with it. Whatever it is.

“Talk to me, Bucky.”

“Don’t do that,” Bucky replies irritably. He pokes at the unopened boxes of food. “You don’t need to handle me. I’m fine.”

“You’re upset.” Which is in no way a denial. The unfortunate truth is that sometimes Bucky _does_ need to be handled. He hasn’t been a threat to any of them, not since he came in, but Steve worries what Bucky might do to himself. He has decades of forced violence weighing down his conscious. Steve’s biggest fear is that Bucky will vanish again, and Steve can’t lose him. Not now that they've found each other.

“I’m just…I don’t know.” Bucky makes a growling, frustrated noise. “I can’t remember. Were we…did we ever…?”

Steve doesn’t know what Bucky is trying to ask him, but he desperately wants to give him an answer. Wants to help fill in those empty holes in his memory. “You can ask me anything, you know that. No stupid questions, right?”

Bucky looks up at him, and Steve’s breath catches in his throat. Desperation, confusion, and something else Steve can’t quite define are etched into the lines of Bucky’s face, and radiating out of his eyes.

“The egg creams. I let you finish them because I loved you.”

A wave of relief washes over Steve. That’s an easy one. “I loved you, too. You were my best friend. Still are.”

“Is that all it was? Friends?”

“It was everything,” Steve answers honestly. However much it hurts, Bucky deserves the truth. “For a long time, it was all I had. And the time we lived in…that’s all it could be. Even if we wanted more, it wasn’t something we could have.”

And, oh, Steve had wanted more. Bucky would share a bed with him sometimes, when Steve was really sick, and his fevered mind had thought up so many scenarios that ended with them in a naked embrace. Just before Bucky shipped out, Steve had been daring enough to kiss him, right on the mouth, and it hardly mattered that he’d waited till Bucky was out cold to do it. It had been his only chance and he never regretted taking it.

“What about now?” Bucky’s gaze is lowered again, his voice raw with emotion. “Would it be okay now?”

Steve’s having a hard time catching his breath, and for a second he flashes back to his pre-serum self, chest aching with the strain of pulling air into his lungs.

“Bucky.”

“I know I forgot you,” Bucky says defensively. “And I still don’t remember everything. But this feeling…it won’t go away.”

Steve’s not sure he’s felt this much since they fished him out of the ice; he hasn’t realized how numb he’s been. His skin is flushed, his heart racing, and he reaches out to cover Bucky’s hand with his own. It sends a cascade of burgers and chicken sandwiches to the floor.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, forcing the words past the lump in his throat. “It’s okay now.”

The look Bucky gives him is equal parts bashful and heated, and all Steve wants to do is pull him close, hold him tight and never let go.

“Finish the fuckin’ McFlurry,” Bucky says. “And let’s go home.”

It’s time to make some new memories.


End file.
